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You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview

blog.interviewing.io

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Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview

#341

Post by Pyxl101 »

ams6110 wrote: post #9

I've been in software tech for nearly 30 years. Never had a "technical" interview, puzzle solving, or anything like that. I would not take a job that screened candidates that way. If references and credentials and track record aren't enough, I would look elsewhere.

People claim all kinds of things as part of their resume and track record that aren't true. It's simply routine. People who were on a team that worked with a technology list their technology as something they know. People who were on a team that delivered a product claim the product delivery as their own. Drill into what exactly their role was during conversation and you'll get a much different story. Ask them details about the technology listed on their resume, and you'll quite often find that they know little about it. Resume inflation is so standard that filtering it out is not even a question.

You know what's honest and true? Put someone in a room and talk to them, and see how they react to a situation and perform. See what they can figure out from first principles. Strong performance in these situations (problem solving, i.e. reasoning from first principles) correlates very well in my experience with strong performance on the job as a software engineer.

Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview

#342

Post by burfog »

burkaman wrote: post #7
treehau5 wrote: post #4

I agree that tech interviews are terrible, and you cannot do any sort of self-reflection on them (especially if they are these q/a and or puzzle types where they don't give you answers or feedback of what you are looking for, despite being reasonably confident you answered correctly -- even after having requested the feedback -- I had this experience at GitLab) > We believe that technical interviewing is a broken pro…

I think the next couple sentences explain it well: > It takes a lot of interviews to get used to the process and the format and to understand that the stuff you do in technical interviews isn’t actually the stuff you do at work every day. And it takes people in your social circle all going through the same experience, screwing up interviews here and there, and getting back on the horse to realize that poor performanc…

1 or 2 is nothing.

For PhD science in industry, I remember my father sending out about 1000 resumes on paper. He took a 2-month drive around the USA for interviews, dropping in wherever he could convince somebody to meet him.

Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview

#343

Post by [deleted] »

T2_t2 wrote: post #137
balls187 wrote: post #36

Indians of Asian descent are a minority in the US, but well represented in Software Engineering. Further, there are plenty more Indian, Chinese, and Russian female engineers, than there are American (of european, aka White) female engineers. I am less inclined to believe there is systemic bias against women, and minorities, and instead a culture difference between groups who are well represented in engineering, and g…

> I am less inclined to believe there is systemic bias against women, and minorities, and instead a culture difference between groups who are well represented in engineering, and groups which are not. And that cultural difference is INDIVIDUAL CHOICE. When people are free to choose whatever they like, because they aren't scared of starving, which is true in Western countries, they overwhelmingly choose gender stereot…

[deleted]

Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview

#344

Post by Fomite »

tw04 wrote: post #242
Fomite wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the things currently being tangled with, in nursing (because contrary to the usual assertion, the profession does worry about this) is the tendency for male nurses to get assigned to difficult patients who need restraint, and what that means for their occupational health.

It shouldn't be though, that's kind of the point. Directing people to a profession to make the representation equal is both counter-productive and IMO HURTS us as a whole because you end up with people pursuing a career they potentially hate because someone gave them a scholarship or promised them more money for doing so. If more women than men want to be nurses, awesome, let them. If men are intentionally NOT being…

All of that is orthogonal to the actual content of the post, which is about the job quality and duties of men who choose to be nurses.

Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview

#345

Post by ryandrake »

sjburt wrote: post #224
foolfoolz wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the biggest catch 22 for me is when you work with someone for years at a job. at this job you have a strong interview process. you reject the same 80%+ of candidates. then you move somewhere else. you refer your friend. they get rejected. were they a bad employee? did they sneak in the door at the last place? Is there a problem with how we do interviews?

Speaking as someone who has taken on a lot of hiring responsibility: the cost for rejecting a good applicant is 4-5 hours of my teams time while they interview someone else. The cost for accepting a bad applicant is several months of salary, reduced productivity for my team, risk of a discrimination suit if I don't put them on a PIP, etc. So as a hiring manager I am pretty OK with rejecting a lot of good applicants j…

> So as a hiring manager I am pretty OK with rejecting a lot of good applicants just because some little part of the interview didn't go well, if it means that I never hire anyone really bad.

How does this square with the oft-repeated "shortage of engineers" meme that Silicon Valley can't shake. You seem to be able to pick and choose, and pass on good candidates for nit-picky reasons, so is there really a shortage of talent?

Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview

#346

Post by khedoros1 »

skywhopper wrote: post #213
Scea91 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had 4 technical interviews in my life and passed all of them. I didn't practice for them, I just have strong foundations in CS. The most criticism of interviews comes from people who can't get past them.

Meanwhile, I do terribly in technical interviews, and I've failed at pretty much all of them. Then in the jobs I've successfully gotten, I always get surprised feedback of how much stronger an employee I turn out to be than was expected based on my interview. Technical interviews that become a game pass on a lot of potentially strong employees.

This is me, too. People react with astonishment when I dive into a new technology, pick it up quickly, and become productive. Interviews are hell, though (and worse than they used to be). I can't sleep the night before a big one, and I tend to be nauseous and jittery during the interview. That doesn't come across well at all.

Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview

#348

Post by debt »

technical interviews are asinine.

they make ya feel pretty good but cmon anyone with half a brain knows it's all bullshit. Like seriously this is the best idea we have as software engineers? tell me the big o of an algorithm that can reverse a string? a lil quiz

Dustin muskovitz helped build FB he learned php from a perl for dummies book in one weekend. there's 1000's of these stories all over the world but just replace billions with thousands and millions of dollars but u get it

referrals are preferential because we don't wanna hire someone we can't immediately fire if they suck.

how about how badly do you want this job or how eager are you to learn

Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview

#349

Post by Sacho »

curun1r wrote: post #215
FT_intern wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a pipeline issue but there are ways to cater to certain groups (see affirmative action). The question is, why is there a need to cater to certain groups? Incongruity is present in every field, every job, every company, everywhere. As long as opportunity is sufficiently available for everyone (which it is, one can learn to program, get input on their code and collaborate with other people on the internet without…

> The question is, why is there a need to cater to certain groups? Have you ever used software or website that was written entirely by an offshore team and felt that it was a bit "off"? The translations were a bit wonky and the interactions felt somewhat unintuitive? Most people have and we're more than willing to attribute it to a lower skill level, but it's also the case that clear and intuitive aren't universal co…

> Have you ever used software or website that was written entirely by an offshore team and felt that it was a bit "off"? The translations were a bit wonky and the interactions felt somewhat unintuitive?

Translations off? Sure. Unintuitive? I don't know, but let's say I'll give you that. The offshore team lives in their own cultural bubble, where English is used in a particular way(incongruent with what I/you are used to), and maybe they like to place their menu on the left instead of on the right. I can see, intuitively, the link between "local differences" like language proficiency and cultural preference, and producing a different product.

You then cite "white men" making software that's intuitive for "themselves". I don't see any intuitive characteristics that would encompass "white men" in any meaningful way. There's white men in the US, there's white men in Russia. The white men in Russia don't build applications the same way the white men in the US do.

I can instinctively tell the difference between a german developer and a US developer(visible language differences). What are the common factors attributable to "white males" that lead them to create software that is intuitive for them?

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